The European Medicines Agency (EMA) announced that the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine is safe. Following the decision by the agency, which is the equivalent of the FDA in Europe, EU countries resumed the vaccination.

The vaccine had raised alarms in some countries after cases of people dying after vaccination. The domino effect was not long in coming, and country after country began to halt the process in the face of such allegations. The EMA agency had to intervene and analyze the case closely to reach a verdict.

Yesterday the verdict was known: the vaccine is safe. Germany, France, and Italy said they will resume the vaccination process today. The EMA says the conclusion is scientifically clear and therefore rules out that the vaccine causes clots, as initially speculated. The incidents of thrombus formation, stroke, and pulmonary embolism were therefore a coincidence in these people and not a product of the vaccine.

Emer Cooke, director of EMA, noted that the investigation found no link of the vaccine to thrombi occurring in the blood. That assumption led 17 countries to suspend its use in recent days. Cooke said that “the protective benefits of the covid vaccine outweigh the risks”.

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who has been a staunch defender of the product developed by the two UK bodies, said the decision ended concerns about the vaccine. He said in no uncertain terms that both the Oxford and Pfizer vaccines are safe. “What is not safe is getting infected with Covid.” His comments coincided with those of French Prime Minister Jean Castex, who announced that he would be given the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine today.

Despite this, some media outlets continue to publish stories about deaths following the use of the vaccine. However, it must be said that the vaccine has been given to more than 17 million people in Europe and Great Britain to date. Sabine Straus, in charge of reviewing the EMA evidence, noted that the cases of thrombi reported after the vaccine was “much lower than expected in the general population”.

According to the experts, many of these are from people who, with or without the vaccine, could have died. It should be borne in mind that the population being vaccinated at the moment is older and therefore more vulnerable. It is, therefore, to be expected that incidents such as these will occur without necessarily being due to the injection. Many of them are part of the annual statistics of thrombus or stroke cases that usually occur. Therefore, the problem is not so much with the vaccine as with the risk of cardiovascular problems at this age.

With this decision, many European countries that had stopped the vaccination process will be able to continue it without any problems and thus move towards the goal of vaccinating as many people as possible as soon as possible to lower infection rates on the continent.

As a precaution, doctors say anyone with a headache for more than four days after vaccination or swelling beyond the injection site should seek specialized care.

Another piece of good news about vaccines is the result of an Oxford University study that disproves that the Brazilian variant is resistant to vaccines. Previously thought to be immune to the various products now available to prevent severe covid, the work indicates that the variant may be less resistant than initially thought.

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If AstraZeneca doesn’t have vaccines for the EU, it doesn’t have them for anyone else. This reasoning, which has become a protectionist mechanism to prevent the leakage of vaccines manufactured within the EU to other corners of the world, has just made its debut in Italy. The laboratory has announced to the European Commission that it will deliver half of its commitment in the first quarter of the year – 40 million doses, instead of the 80 million signed up for, or 120 million at best.

Shipment blocked by Italy

Italy has blocked a shipment of AstraZeneca vaccines to Australia, according to the Financial Times. Italy’s newly arrived prime minister, Mario Draghi, who last week was particularly belligerent against vaccine suppliers, has for the first time applied the system devised at the end of January. At the time the European Commission dismissed it as a mere export ban system. And, in fact, for the entire month of February, it was not implemented.

But on Thursday, reports the Ansa news agency, the Italian authorities notified the European Commission of a decision to block the export of a batch of vaccines after receiving an application for authorization to export vaccines from AstraZeneca. The application was made following the European Commission regulation adopted on 30 January, “which makes the export of certain products conditional on the presentation of an export authorization”.

Thus, Italy has sent the non-authorization proposal to the European Commission: The Member State must decide on the authorization request “following the opinion of the European Commission”.

The Italian proposal to refuse authorization has been favored by the European Commission, and as a result, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs formally issued the measure to refuse the export of more than 250,000 doses.

Adopted under the emergency procedure, Brussels decided at the end of January that until the end of March 2021, exports of COVID-19 vaccines outside the EU will be subject to export authorizations. This regime only applies to exports by companies with which the European Union has concluded advance purchase agreements, such as AstraZeneca.

The fear of Italian government and EU

The fear of the Italian government and the European Commission itself is that AstraZeneca will not comply in the second quarter either. Indeed, last week an EU source quoted by Reuters said that between April and June AstraZeneca will deliver 90 million doses in the EU, half of the 180 million agreed. In total, AstraZeneca’s total supply to the EU could be around 130 million doses by the end of June, far short of the 300 million it committed to deliver by that date.

Right now, AstraZeneca is working to increase productivity in its EU supply chain and make use of its global network to deliver 180 million doses to the EU in the second quarter.

“What is important for us is that, together with the Member States, we can ensure rapid deliveries of sufficient quantities of doses,” a spokesperson for the EU executive explained: “The Commission and the Member States are in contact with the company, and we are working to achieve this.

EU takes steps

On Thursday, the EU took the first step towards authorization of the Russian vaccine Sputnik V. The European Medicines Agency (EMA) announced that it had authorized the vaccine. This was announced by the European Medicines Agency (EMA), which has started the preliminary analysis of the vaccine developed by the Russian epidemiology center Gamaleya. Whenever the European Commission has been asked about this, it has replied that an almost essential step for a pooled purchasing agreement is that it be produced in a plant within the European Union, which is currently not the case.

“The fact that the EMA authorizes the vaccine does not oblige the European Commission to conclude a preferential pooled purchase agreement,” said Eric Mamer, spokesman for the EU executive on Thursday: “When the time comes, if the Commission and the Member States decide to negotiate a contract with the manufacturers of Sputnik V, we will communicate it. We are in negotiations with Novavax or Valneva, we have signed a new agreement with Pfizer to accelerate the delivery of vaccines, but not with the manufacturers of Sputnik. This is the situation at the moment.

This announcement comes days after the EMA announced that it expects to give its recommendation for Janssen’s (Johnson&Johnson) COVID-19 vaccine on 11 March 2021. The European Commission will then give conditional marketing authorization.

The fourth vaccine

The Janssen/Johnson&Johnson vaccine will thus become the fourth vaccine, after BioNTech/Pfizer, Moderna, and AstraZeneca, to be made available in the European Union.

The European Commission has signed contracts with AstraZeneca (400 million doses), Sanofi-GSK (300 million doses), Johnson & Johnson (400 million doses), BioNTech-Pfizer (up to 600 million doses, although 500 million doses have already been confirmed), CureVac (405 million doses) and Moderna (160 million doses plus another 300 reconfirmed on Tuesday).

In addition, the EU executive is in exploratory talks with the pharmaceutical company Novavax for up to 200 million doses and with Valneva for up to 60 million doses.

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It is the first time during the Fifth Republic that a French president has been sentenced to a firm prison term. Jacques Chirac was sentenced to two years in prison in 2011 for the scandal of fictitious jobs in the Paris mayor’s office, but this did not imply actual imprisonment.

Sarkozy, who has a lot of influence on the right, was until now considered a potential presidential contender again.

Apart from the criminal issue, the ruling is a major political blow because Sarkozy has continued to wield a lot of influence on the French right. He was until now considered a possible contender for the presidency again, a possibility that is evaporating. The current head of state, Emmanuel Macron, maintains a very cordial and fluid relationship with Sarkozy. He consults him and has even entrusted him with official missions. Macron has made use of people who worked for him. For example, the current prime minister, Jean Castex, was deputy secretary-general of the Elysée during Sarkozy’s presidency. The interior minister, Gérald Darmanin, was very close to the former president.

Sarkozy’s lawyers will likely file an appeal and a new trial will have to be held. The two co-defendants, Judge Gilbert Azibert and lawyer Thierry Herzog were also sentenced to the same penalties. Although the judge did not finally get the comfortable and well-paid post in Monaco – thanks to Sarkozy’s mediation – that he had been promised, the court found that there was a clear corruption pact. According to the law, the intent is sufficient for this offense to exist. The national financial prosecutor’s office had asked for four years in prison, two of the firm.

The former president is accused, in another case, of receiving illegal funding from Libya’s Gaddafi regime.

Sarkozy has other very serious open cases, the Pygmalion case, in which he is suspected of having illegally financed his campaign for re-election in 2012. The former head of state is also accused of having received money from the Libyan regime of Moammar al-Gaddafi to finance his 2007 campaign.

The case that is the subject of today’s ruling was uncovered thanks to wiretaps ordered while another affair was being investigated. It was surprising that Sarkozy and his lawyer used mobile phones that were not in his name, methods more befitting of criminals than of someone who had occupied the highest office of state.

A politician who has been everything

Nicolas Sarkozy, the son of an immigrant of Hungarian origin, began his political career very young, at the age of 22, in municipal politics in Neuilly-sur-Seine, a wealthy suburb west of Paris, where he was mayor for almost 20 years. Sarkozy was several times a minister – he held, among others, the interior and economy portfolios – MP, MEP, and president of his party, he won the 2007 presidential election against the socialist Ségolène Royal. His turbulent mandate was characterized by the international financial crisis and his eagerness to reform.

In May 2012 he lost narrowly to the Socialist François Hollande. In his bid to return to the Elysée, he has humiliatingly defeated in the Republican Party (LR) primaries in 2016. He came third. He was overtaken by Alain Juppé and François Fillon. Since then, he has devoted himself to business, as an advisor to several large companies. Sarkozy has been married three times – most recently to Carla Bruni at the Elysée Palace – and is the father of four children. The eldest is 35. The youngest is 9.

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The leaders of the seven most industrialised countries gathered on a virtual summit which was marked by the coronavirus pandemic and the need to speed up the distribution of vaccines.

French President Emmanuel Macron proposed giving 5% of the doses held by the seven countries in the group, but neither his office nor the other leaders specified the quantities of vaccines they are willing to share. The US, France, the UK, Germany, Canada, Italy and Japan spoke in general terms of working together on global issues, including the fight against Covid-19. To this end, they announced a total of $7.5 billion in aid to bolster global vaccination.

The cooperation of the powers in developing countries will be essential to achieve comprehensive immunisation, as discussed at the G7 virtual summit on Friday 19^th of February. French President Emmanuel Macron said that Europe and the United States should give the poorest countries 5% of the vaccines that G7 members have.

“This is worth a lot. It is worth our credibility,” Macron said after the meeting. “If we can do this, the West will have a presence” in African countries, according to the French president. Otherwise, those nations will turn to Chinese and Russian vaccines, and then “the power of the West will not be a reality”, Macron said.

Then, in a tweet, he called on the United States and European countries to give Africa the 13 million doses needed to vaccinate all the continent’s health workers.

China and Russia are already ahead in several countries, including some in Latin America. Argentina, Bolivia and Venezuela are inoculating Sputnik V, developed by the Russian laboratory Gamaleya National Centre for Epidemiology and Microbiology. And in the giants of the region, something similar is also happening. Mexico is on the verge of applying Russian doses and Brazil is using two vaccines produced in the Chinese laboratories of Sinovac and Sinopharm. However, most Latin American countries that have started inoculation are using the vaccine developed by the US pharmaceutical company Pfizer in partnership with Germany’s BioNTech.

The African Union expects 300 million Sputnik V vaccines by May, compared to the 270 million it purchased from the English laboratory AstraZeneca and the American companies Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson.

It is precisely because of this race that the G7 is concerned about ‘vaccine diplomacy’. But not all leaders agreed with Macron’s point. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, for example, said that the distribution of doses around the world was “an elementary question of fairness” and that the pandemic would not end until everyone was vaccinated. And while she said rich countries should give from their own stockpiles of vaccines to developing countries, she made clear that this did not mean that her nation would be deprived of inoculations. “No vaccination appointments in Germany will be put at risk,” the chancellor said. 

When asked by reporters about Macron’s proposal, Merkel said the leaders had not yet discussed the percentage of doses or the timetable for distributing them. “That still needs to be discussed,” she added from Berlin.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson also did not specify a specific amount and, only in general terms, pledged to give “the bulk of future surplus vaccines” to the UN-backed COVAX effort to vaccinate the world’s most vulnerable people. Then UK foreign secretary James Cleverly was more specific, saying it was “difficult to say with any certainty” when or how much vaccine his country might donate.

Indeed, Macron’s office refrained from talking about the exact numbers of vaccines France is willing to give, nor did it refer to a date for doing so.

G7 allocates $7.5 billion for Covid-19 immunisation

Despite the lack of precision on vaccine quantities or timelines, the G7 did make a concrete announcement on the issue: $7.5 billion in support for Covid-19 vaccination. In a communiqué, the member states stressed that “today, with increased financial commitments of more than $4 billion”, G7 support “stands at $7.5 billion”.

Merkel pledged 1.5 billion euros for the global fight against the coronavirus. Germany thus becomes the “first global donor” to multilateral efforts to curb the spread of the outbreak.

This action is in line with the multilateralist stance that dominated the summit. “We will work together (…) to shape a recovery that promotes the health and prosperity of our people and our planet,” said the leaders of the United States, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Italy, Canada, and Japan in the joint communiqué.

“This is a pandemic, and it makes no sense for one country to get ahead of itself, we must move forward together,” added British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, whose country takes over the rotating presidency of the G7 this year.

However, none of the seven countries made commitments on how many doses of their own they are willing to give to stop Covid-19 worldwide.

Environment, another central theme of the summit

Leaders also shared their intentions to move towards a post-pandemic recovery that considers the environment and the fight against climate change.

Nine months ahead of the next UN Climate Conference (COP26), scheduled for November in Glasgow, the leaders pledged to put their “global ambitions on climate change and reversing biodiversity loss at the heart” of their plans.

They also mentioned “a green transformation and clean energy transitions that reduce emissions and create good jobs on a pathway to net zero by 2050 at the latest”.

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Now he can reap diplomatic dividends while Russia enjoys arguably its greatest scientific breakthrough since the Soviet era.

Countries are queuing up for supplies of Sputnik V after revised results published in The Lancet medical journal this week showed that the Russian vaccine protects against the deadly virus as well as US and European injections, and far more effectively than its Chinese rivals.

Going for the EU market

At least 19 countries have approved the use of the inoculation, including EU member state Hungary, while key markets such as Brazil and India are close to licensing it. Now Russia is setting its sights on the prized EU market as the bloc struggles with its vaccination programme amid supply shortages.  

In the global battle to defeat a pandemic that claimed 2.3 million lives in just over a year, the race for vaccines has taken on geopolitical significance as governments seek to extricate themselves from the enormous social and economic damage caused by the fiscal closures imposed to limit the spread of the virus. 

That gives Russia an advantage as one of the few countries where scientists have produced an effective defence.

91.6 per cent effectiveness

Its decision to name Sputnik V after the world’s first satellite whose 1957 launch gave the Soviet Union a stunning triumph against the United States to begin the space race only underlined the scale of the importance Moscow attached to the achievement. 

Results from late-stage trials of 20,000 participants reviewed in The Lancet showed the vaccine has an efficacy rate of 91.6 per cent.

“This is a turning point for us,“ Kirill Dmitriev, executive director of the Russian Direct Investment Fund, which backed the development of Sputnik V and oversees its international deployment, said in an interview.

Political gains?

While it is too early to assess Putin’s political gains, Russia is already making much of the vaccine’s powerful impact on its image after years of international condemnation for election meddling and targeting of political opponents at home and abroad. State television reports extensively on deliveries to other nations.

Sputnik’s success will not change hostility towards Putin among Western governments, although it could strengthen Russia’s geopolitical influence in regions such as Latin America, according to Oksana Antonenko, director of the Control Risks consultancy.

“With this vaccine, it has shown that it is capable of producing something new that is in demand around the world,” she said.

Manufacturing in other countries

Production constraints are the biggest challenge facing all manufacturers, as global demand far outstrips supply. Russia, which promised free injections for its 146 million people, began producing the vaccine last year and the vaccine is now being manufactured in countries including India, South Korea, and Brazil.

This week, a close ally emerged in Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who signed a deal to produce Sputnik V in Turkey, even as the nation has agreements to buy 50 million doses of China Sinovac Biotech’s CoronaVac vaccine and 4.5 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNtech shot.

Despite Russia’s success, domestic demand remains tepid so far, driven by public suspicion of the authorities. Putin, 68, stoked scepticism in December when he said he was looking forward to receiving the vaccine when it was approved for people his age.

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